Category Archives: Elder Scrolls

One of my all time favorite screen shots so far, filtered, and (obviously) used as a cover shot, or thumbnail.

Hello! I’ve been doing a Skyrim Let’s Play (unmodded game, on XBOX 360, with all expansions) and so far have taken the time to capture screen shots for the video thumb nails. Please click on the images to see them full size – the small format on this page doesn’t do them justice.

I take many I like that I don’t have a current use for (and I have left some of my best ones out for my own use later). So, you can use any of these that you like in a blog article, but please attribute them to this site by including a link to this page (I’ll note those I used already in case that matters to you). I’ll be adding more images and replacing some of the olde ones frequently. Thank you, and enjoy! (PS – Even though I’ve spent a great deal of time playing Skyrim in the past, I’ve learned more from viewing it slowly via video and from seeing characters in these stills!)

Some Draugr are after me! (Previously used as a thumbnail image)

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A dragon, all bloodied, about to meet his demise.

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Jyrik Gauldurson and the Eye of Magnus. Love his helmet! (Previously used as a thumbnail image.)

With Christian Eyes author does a Skyrim “let’s play” with a cool-looking (magish) female Breton. For any Christians or simply parents interested in getting a general impression of in-game dialogue and violence, the game introduction isn’t bad way to do it. There is a little swearing in it, which is actually more than in the rest of the game — most swearing, when characters happen to do it, is in ways reflective of the in-game culture (not standard real world curses).

A beheading takes place in the introduction, fairly representative of pretty much the worst you’ll see in-game. Certain perks (like Devastating Blow and Savage Strike) can be chosen later on to emphasize bloody violence, but, as said, that is a choice a player can make. Unfortunately, however, you can’t turn off the slow-mo killing scenes which happen once-in-a-while (in Fallout New Vegas, which Bethesda also produced, you can. Maybe the next Elder Scrolls game will have this feature). There are reasons why Skyrim has a “mature” rating, but as far as mature games go, it’s quite tame. Thanks for watching!

Maybe you’ve come here before and read one or more of my posts on Skyrim. If you haven’t, and you’re a parent interested in knowing more about the game, please also read my earlier review for parents. It would probably be better if you read that one first, actually, since it presents the positive aspects of the game. And just by way of warning, there are all kinds of spoilers in both posts.

I decided to write this not because I didn’t know about some unpleasant things about Skyrim before (though I know more now) – from a Christian perspective – but out of frustration over the questions presented on a major website. A great percentage of these questions show that a lot of young people like to play all of the bad aspects of the game, and miss the complexities. If you are a Christian and let your teen play without watching and knowing what they’re doing, maybe you’ll want to. My son hasn’t played lately, but when he did, he liked to play bad characters once to see what they were about. I didn’t like that he played some of the roles he had, but I talked with him about it. It gave me an opportunity to find out what he thought of things presented in the game, and if he did something bad in the game, how that might or might not reflect on his real-life actions and attitudes.

There are certain things that I really didn’t want him doing, and he didn’t – like selecting the perk where your character will be able to cut people’s heads off. This is bad enough in quick game play, but in Skyrim slow-motion, close-up cut-scenes happen randomly and they would include the slicing off of heads. If a parent is concerned about what their child can select as perks, they can easily see all available perks from the perk trees, viewable after selecting the Skills menu.

The problem with Skyrim is that it is made by a corporation seeking the largest possible market (the Elder Scrolls series did not start out this way, and previous games were more specifically moral). While the Dovahkiin – your character, the Dragonborn – is SUPPOSED to be a good SAVIOR type of figure, the player can choose to do all kinds of evil things. Not only that, but there is quite a bit more to do in the game if the player decides to do these bad things. Please watch the video below to hear the theme song, which is awesome, and read the words of the song. They talk of the character of the Dovahkiin and of the main quest of the game (though there is a secondary main quest too).

As a parent, you may want to know more specifically about what I’m talking of in order to decide if you want to limit your kid’s game play in these areas.

1) The Thieves Guild. In past Elder Scrolls games, the Thieves Guild was more like a Robin Hood sort of organization. In Skyrim it is not, and it is controlled by Mavin Blackbriar, a super evil, powerful, business woman who has a whole heck of a lot people fooled. The most disturbing thing about Skyrim, when I first started playing, was finding out that you cannot get rid of Mavin and stop her murders and mafia-like activities in Riften – even though it seems like the game-makers intended to let you do something. By the way the characters in Riften talk, and by the notes you find, it seems as though bringing Mavin to justice will be a quest . . . but in the end you can’t do anything about her. In any case, there are lots of quests to do with the Thieves Guild and lots of items unique to the guild to be had, so it would be tempting to a lot of people to be in this guild.

2) The Dark Brotherhood. These are assassins for hire. Mavin is in with them too. You get the picture. Again, quests and loot . . . so it’s tempting to play as a bad guy.

3) Vampires. The Dawnguard expansion allows the player to be a vampire, but the main idea is to be a part of the Dawnguard – vampire slayers. The castle with the vampires is pretty disgusting and I think the game makers did an OK job of making vampires a negative thing, while still providing a mass-market expansion. Vampires of course feed on humans.

4) Werewolves and the Companions. Being a werewolf in Skyrim can be only a matter of being stronger once a day, but there is the option to feed off of a human (cannibalism) in order to maintain the form a bit longer. With the Dawngaurd expansion, however, it can get nastier. Dawnguar adds a werewolf perk tree, and unlike the other perk trees, perks can only be ge gained by eating human hearts. Yeah, gross. There is a non-Companions quest in Skyrim that conveys the evilness of lycanthropy. I not only included the Companions here because it is the group where you acquire lycanthropy, but I wanted to mention the less than charitable intentions of the Companions. They only do good works if they’re paid, and one gets the impression that the more they are paid, the more likely they will be to go out and actually do the job. A good thing about the Companions is that you get the opportunity to cure the leader of his werewolfism, which he very much desires.

As discussed in my original review, Skyrim is a complex game if played the way it was meant to be played. One quest that I found to be bad, that seems like a good thing to do at first, is the Gildergreen quest. In this quest, you are to recover an evil blade (hey, a clue there), which is needed in order to collect the sap of a certain tree. The reason you need this sap is to revive the Gildergreen tree in Whiterun. Before you revive it, it looks dead; afterwards it looks alive and vibrant, with purple flowers. So WHY would that be a bad thing? Well, you wouldn’t really know at first.

The first hint is the evil blade, but then, a lot of things in Skyrim are just things and don’t necessarily live up to their names. But there is another hint. When you go to where the mother tree is, which is in a very large, beautiful, and tranquil lit cavern, you encounter some people there enjoying the sanctuary. When you talk with the lady there, you can ask her about the tree and the blade, and she responds very negatively to you. Ok. So . . . what do you do? It doesn’t seem that bad or anything – you just want to revive the tree in Whiterun. But what happens, no matter how hard you try to control the situation, is that the persons in the sanctuary get killed by the guardian Spriggons when you cut the mother tree for its sap. Is reviving an old tree in Whiterun worth the lives of those people? Not in my book. The Whiterun folks can get a new tree!

I think the Gildergreen quest is actually a good lesson in deciphering information and choosing to do the better thing. Skyrim is full of mental and moral exercises such as the Gildergreen quest. A problem with this, however, as with the evil groups and quests in Skyrim generally, is that the player must choose not to do a lot of available game play. As an adult I’m not very tempted to join the evil groups and do evil things, but for a lot of young people these might be tempting (especially in the presence of peer pressure). I do think Skyrim has A LOT going for it compared to other games: visual and musical beauty, complexity (good luck trying to decipher all the purposefully conflicting books and dialogue regarding the history and religion of not only Skyrim, but that of the continent it’s on, Tamriel), historical and mythological aspects, etc. As a Christian parent, I think it’s OK for older kids to play as long as the parent(s) knows about the game and is at least somewhat involved with their kid’s gameplay.

Statue of Talos in Whiterun, with Shrine in front, Dragonsreach to left, giant Eagle in middle, and old Companion’s home to right.

I wrote about this dlc already (at dragonborn dlc wordpress) but wanted to convey some more information about the Skaal’s religious views, and generally about the playability of the new dlc content. So basically this is an addendum to the linked article; please see it if you would like more coverage of the Dragonborn dlc.

Dragonborn DLC playability. First. when we got the DLC I was playing a game where I had a high level character, over 60, and I was getting close to wrapping all the quests up. Playing at this level in Solstheim is relatively easy. Only Karstaag was a difficult opponent (surprising battle, that was!). But, beginning a new game and going through it so far – I’m now level 11 and had gone back to Solstheim after first going there at level 6 – I can say Solstheim is not a place you’ll get through easily for a while. Of course, the game level setting can be adjusted to its lowest level, but I’m going to bet that fighting off random lurkers will prove pretty impossible for a low level character. I wanted very much to make it to Neloth and so I swam there. The only real problem I had was when my companion, Lydia, wouldn’t just swim along and ignore a Lurker. *People ask when “the quest” starts with the DLC. There are various quests, but the main quest with Miraak will activate after you go and see the Greybeards for the first time. A couple of his cultists will meet you somewhere and attack you.

The Skaal and their religions views. The Skaal are most interesting, as their visiting researcher (like an anthropologist amongst a far away and dying tribe) frequently points out. Unlike the majority of Nords, they believe in an All-Maker god and not in the pantheon of deities. If you never read the book, Children of the All-Maker, or don’t talk to Frea after the main quest is over, you would very much think that the Skaal believe in a Judaic type of God. They talk or write of going to be with the All-Maker after they die, and seeing others that have passed on there too. They also allude to spirtual consequences that are Western, not Eastern (there is the call of the All-Maker, and ignoring it has consequences).

YET, oddly, the two sources I mentioned say they believe in reincarnation, even for humans. So, it doesn’t make much sense (you can’t be with the All-Maker visiting relatives while also being another person on earth). Interestingly, there are real-world people groups in Asia that, when found by missionaries in the past, have shown that they believe in God and even had premonitions of Christ. But this is not what is happening with the Skaal. I would give Bethesda some credit for actually taking apparent early Norse belief in reincarnation and adding it into the game (as evidenced in the real-world Norse Poetic Edda). However, having the religious leader (“shaman”) pray in an Eastern religious fashion takes away from this seeming historical reference.

The “Dragonborn” addition to the Skyrim video game, which came out earlier this month (December 2012) for XBOX, has – I think – the most “Christian” oriented content overall (in Skyrim, not the other Elder Scroll games). I wish I had written down certain dialog as I played it with my high-level character, but I simply wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary to takes notes on! (If I start a new game, it will be some time before I can get to those dialogs again – for now, this commentary without quotes will have to do.)

This latest DLC adds additional land mass via a large island known in the Elder Scroll series as Solstheim. (Update of Dec. 24: it appears to be playable from the beginning of a new game, as I went to Soltstheim at level 6, after I fought my first dragon and made my way to Windhelm). It is no doubt loved by Elder Scroll fans since it brings in elements from Morrowind (the home of the Dunmer, or Dark Elves), and indeed, the flavor of the place is quite a bit different from Skyrim (the home of the Nords). There are various quests to be found and accomplished, but the main quest involves the defeat of the first dragonborn, Miraak, who still exists after ages because of his service to Hermeus Mora, the powerful spirit being of knowledge and fate. Miraak desired power and thus made a “pact with the devil” – a safe allusion to Mora and his top minion. The DLC takes place when Miraak has used his powers to enslave the sleeping minds and bodies of the denizens of Solstheim, whom he is using to build a temple to himself. Miraak has only a small amount of dialog, but that small amount sounds an awful lot like satanic desires and promises. In addition, he has his hypnotized followers say things that are a copy, and thus a sick mockery, of true spiritual expression.

What’s interesting, from a Christian-in-the-current-world point of view, is that Hermeus Mora’s realm is called Apocrypha. (“Apocrypha” are extra-biblical writings of various qualities some are legitimate but have some textual or factual issues, while others are outright forgeries with false “witness”). It is dark and hazy and is made up of books (literally – the walls are made of books), and all underneath and around walkable areas is a very black sea. This “sea” has black slithery arms coming out of it all of the time, and they will whip you and hurt you if they can. The most dangerous creatures that stalk the place look very much akin to the old “creature from the black lagoon.” The other dangerous creatures are “seekers,” whose hideous appearance includes a lamprey-like mouth where their stomach is. These seekers of “knowledge” are never satisfied, but devour what their gut desires and not what their heart and mind discerns as true. This is my take on them, anyway, which I see as the problem with seeking and using secret – usually false – knowledge, and which is the point of this dark and eery place.

When it comes to Christianity, God chose to communicate with man and it was His desire to be known and understood. Those who purport to have “secret” knowledge of Him in order to steer someone away from God’s revelation, are not working within God’s desires for mankind.

On the other side of the coin are the Skaal of Solstheim. They are Nords of the ancient way and claim to have been given Solstheim by the All-Maker. They believe in one creator God, and the way they talk about creation and how we are to be in it, generally fits in with the Judeo-Christian biblical message. You can have an interesting conversation with Wulf Wild-Blood of the Skaal, who asks you if you can find his run-away brother whom he believes turned into a werebear (like a werewolf, only a bear). His brother could go down that path only be rejecting the call of the All-Maker. While the Skaal have beliefs that mesh with scriptures, they have others that do not – they believe in reincarnation. Conversations with fellow Skyrim players about how reincarnation doesn’t at all mesh with a loving creator God, and how it is wholly incompatible with Christ’s message and work, is a possible real-world benefit of playing this game.*

If, as a Christian, you will only play games that have pure Christian messages and signs, then Skyrim and Dragonborn aren’t for you. But if you want to play a game that actually gives a nod to God and certain Judeo-Christian beliefs and virtues in today’s world, then Skyrim is an OK game for that. I wrote about Skyrim earlier, here. That review by no means covers all the aspects of Skyrim. There are things about the game I don’t like and scratch my head at, wondering about the game maker (Bethesda) every time I think of them (there are aspects of the game you can only play if you decide to do bad and dishonorable things).

Hopefully I’ll be able to flush this review out in the future, with quotes and such. In the meantime, enjoy the Dragonborn and listen to the new leader of the Skaal: do not follow Hermeus Mora, but follow the path laid out for you (and to the Skaal, this would be by the All-Maker).

* These last two sentences were edited in after the initial posting of this review (12-20-12).

The newest Skyrim DLC is a mini one, called Hearthfire (this review is based on the XBOX 360 game). It allows the player to build up to three houses on property outside of the cities or towns, and to adopt one or two orphaned children. The trailer promised more flexibility in building, in my view, so at first I was disappointed in Hearthfire on that ground. But, after playing it for some time and building all three homes, I am disappointed and annoyed even more. Not totally disappointed, mind you, and I’m not advocating not buying it and trying it out, but I do want to present what is annoying and what needs to be fixed. HOPEFULLY, Bethesda will get around to making some fixes and making some additions to this DLC.

Let’s take a look at adoption first. Instead of simply allowing you to adopt the children already orphaned and being forced to live in the Riften (yuck!) orphanage, you have to decide amongst the four new orphans in the towns and them. There are now more orphans than ever to choose from . . ! No matter what you do, there will always be orphans. When playing Skyrim before, I wanted only to adopt some out of the orphanage, but now there are others – it just never ends and you are not allowed to adopt more.

Anyway, the kids are a nice addition for the most part. (If you don’t want children bugging you to play with them, maybe you should forget about adopting any in the first place, however.) It’s fun giving them things, and they will give you things once in a while, too. One day my son gave me a unique and odd green robe to wear. They love when you give them daggers. You can improve and enchant their wooden swords, and duel wield them yourself if you want a bit of a fun challenge. A problem with giving them items, to me, is that you are very limited in what you can give.

Now, for the building bit – I’ll get to the hunt for butter after this. The three homes you can build are on three specific pieces of property you can buy from the Jarl’s or their stewards. One is near Whiterun, although it’s part of Dawnstar hold. Another is outside of Solitude, with a view of the land bridge that is that city, though it is a part of Morthal hold. The third is close to the lake south of Riverwood – a beautiful area that is like having a vacation home in the woods – and is a part of Falkreath hold.

I am not going to go through all of the addition choices, but will mention a few that give notice for some reason. You can build what is in a provided list for each room/addition, but you don’t have alternate choices within the list. You don’t have a choice between a bed and a table for a certain spot, for example – there’s is only one thing designated for that spot – you can only add it or leave it open. And, you cannot demolish a wing later in case you change your mind about the kind of house you want.

All the homes start off with a small starter room (home!), and in order to add the specialty wings, you must build the main hall attached to the first starter room. The starter room has a bed and fire pit in it, and so it is livable as is. However, if you hire a steward – very advisable since not all the mill owners will sell you wood, as the add-on claims – then where do both of you sleep? This is actually more of a problem later.

You will have the ability to add two small beds and a double bed in the main hall for you and your spouse, and your kids (forget “choice” – there is no other options for this area, nor any other, in these Hearthfire houses). However, the steward and housecarl always sleep in the beds that are for the kids, or one of them may sleep in your own bed. This is a problem with the game. If you choose to build the bedroom wing, this is not a problem. But if you choose to build a different wing and use those main hall beds, then good luck! The problem is only compounded by the fact that there is only one bed left in the original building for both the steward and the housecarl. This obviously was not thought through by Bethesda, and I find it quite astonishing.

The storage room was a very major disappointment. Seriously, Bethesda couldn’t spring for a dragon claw holder and some other holder for specific items – like the various named jewelry you can find – especially since everything always pops out of display cases and off of shelves? This really fries me! Come one, Bethesda . . . really!?! Give us something for the money. The cellar is a bit interesting in that way: you can build a shrine holder and all the shrines to the gods. But a storage room that doesn’t store all those specialty items? Wow and weird.

The homes do not incorporate anything from the Dawnguard DLC. It seems like the ability to add new plants and new creatures, like from the Soul Cairn and the Vale, at least, should have been designed into this new DLC. It becomes obvious that this add-on was planned from the beginning. Skyrim had orphans and they asked to be adopted, yet you could not adopt them. There is no Dawnguard content in Hearthfire, except for one thing: you can give your child an armored dog from Fort Dawnguard (a nice surprise). So, why wasn’t this simply part of Skyrim to begin with? My “other half” is really into the Elder Scrolls, though Morrowind specifically. He told me that in the past, an add-on such as this would’ve been free. It seems Bethesda held some of the content out in order to make some more cash, while providing a not so great product.

Which brings us to the butter quest. There’s not a formal quest for butter, of course, but there is an actual one. Butter is as hard to find as gold- if not harder – as far as I can tell. You will want butter if you build the kitchen wing (it probably has the best looking wing interior), which has an “oven” for baking. Butter is an 0ft-needed ingredient, but good luck finding it!!! You can’t make it, even though you can own cows now and there is a butter churn in the kitchen. So far I have only received one butter out of the churn. I have searched high and low for butter, looking to find it in various places, and to buy it. I never find it (it isn’t laying around like soup or stew), and have been only offered it to buy about three times from various vendors. Wow. Who knew baking could be so hard?

So if you want to have something new to do in Skyrim before the next big DLC comes out, and you like having children, then Hearthfire would be worth the $5, in my opinion. But otherwise, the choice is of course up to you, especially if you want to bake but don’t feel it worth hours of your time in a quest for butter!

November 9 Update (XBOX): After months, the churn finally had a new bowl of butter in it. BUT, within a short time, it had butter in it again. Perhaps there was an update that loaded that we didn’t notice, or perhaps it’s very random! Also, the best places I’ve noticed to buy butter are from the town stands, from the vendors selling vegetables and other foods (that is, the dark elf in Riften and the two humans in White Run and Windhelm).

This post could be opening up a whole can of worms, but so be it. Why all the possible worms? When my son was very young I thought – based on so much of what I read and heard from Christians – that video games were just all from hell and will lead to hell. In more recent times, I have posted online with some Christians who still feel the same, though I’m hoping they don’t really think “Harvest Moon” or “Hello Kitty” games provide a direct ticket to the brimstone dungeon. There are nasty games out there for sure, games that relish dishonesty, crime, blood, gore, and killing. But does that make all video games bad? Putting aside the issue of time spent by the Christian on past-times (hobbies, entertainment, etc.), are certain video games not only fun and cathartic, but also potentially useful for stretching the mind and for witnessing? I think yes, so let’s take a look at Skyrim with its Dawnguard expansion (Hearthfire, added September 4, 2012, adds pleasantries to the game).

Beautiful Skyrim environment with flying dragon. Author screen shot.

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The time frame in Skyrim seems to correspond nicely with the Iron Age in Northern Europe and/or France and the British Isles. Skyrim refers to a region in the continent of Tamriel, and is one of a number of games in the Elder Scrolls series. The region makes up the north central part of the continent, and its Nordic inhabitants are akin to the real world Norsemen (Vikings). For example, what is like heaven to the Vikings was called Asgard, and the honored hall Vahalla. In Skyrim, these are referred to as Sovngarde and Shor’s Hall (Hall of Valor), respectively. The Imperials, which very obviously correspond to the Romans, have kept order in Tamriel for some time, though they are present in Skyrim now in order to crush a rebellion. This isn’t just a little rebellion, but a power play that would affect all of Skyrim and its relations to the rest of the Empire. Spoiler alert: In typical historic fashion, the son of a king killed his own brother in an attempt to be high king. Each region in Skyrim has a king, and these kings choose a high king from among them. This was a spoiler since only one or two characters in the whole game actually tell you that the king killed was the usurper’s brother.

The point about this power play, however, is that the usurper, Ulfric Stormcloak, had gotten many in Skyrim behind him because he claimed that his primary goal was to reestablish the free worship of the god Talos. Talos used be just a man (Tiber Septim), but was made a god by the other gods (somehow – how this happened is unclear) and thus became worshipped, not just revered as a Dragonborn or for uniting Tamriel in the distant past. Why was the worship of Talos banned? To end a major war the Imperials and other leaders had signed a treaty with the High Elves, and part of this treaty prohibited Talos worship, as the High Elves considered Talos to be a false god.

Despite the treaty Talos worship was going on quietly, but Ulfric’s uprising changed that. Because of the rebellion, the High Elves began persecuting Talos worshippers, thus giving the Stormcloaks fuel for their fire. There are subtle complications added to the game to make the decision regarding which faction to follow not necessarily an easy one; it certainly shouldn’t be rushed. While most people in Skyrim revere Talos, there are some things said to make a player wonder about him. For instance, the self-proclaimed mouth-piece of Talos in Whiterun is annoying and may seem mad (he definitely is depicted as a melodramatic street preacher), and indeed, his feverish support of the Stormcloaks ignores both the reality of what is going on behind the scenes with the Imperials (many of whom also worship Talos) and the conniving and tyrannical nature of Ulfric and his Stormcloaks.

The Stormcloaks are pretty nasty, saying that if you don’t join them you’re against them (an enemy), yet the Imperials say no such thing. There is much more to seemingly righteous rebels behavior vs Imperial behavior, but I’ll leave that for your exploration. The Stormcloak rebellion is one of the two major plots/quests of the game, the other being Dragonborn’s (the player is the Dragonborn) destiny to rid the world of Alduin, the world-eater dragon. The quests are not totally separate. Without paying close attention, a player may totally miss that Alduin and Ulfric are intertwined.

For the Christian, Alduin is of great interest since he is a Satan figure (without the Satan figure, one could maybe take Talos to be a pagan mythological man-god). He claims to be the first born of the great god Akatosh (and some even worshipped him as Akatosh himself), but in reality he was created, and for a specific purpose. He defies Akatosh regarding his purpose, interferes with man, and is arrogant. Skyrim is full of hints and references to religion, folklore, history, and literature, although much of these are not wholly analogous. As might have been inferred by now, talking with someone about Skyrim can be a starting point to talking about Christ and even the existence of Satan.

An inquisitive player may decide it’s worth his or her time to look into the real-world peoples and such in the game. Besides the examples already discussed, there is the goddess Mara, who quite obviously corresponds to Mary, mother of Jesus. Elves are of course derived from folklore (as are the Dwarves), and their demise followed the acceptance of Christianity in European areas. The magical High Elves came from a large island to the southwest of Tamriel, and so this alludes to Atlantis. There are Bretons in the game and there are real world Bretons.

As with much fantasy in modern times, the game includes Orcs. Where did Orcs come from? Well, from the mind of JRR Tolkien (author of Lord of the Rings)! In Skyrim they are not just like Tolkien’s Orcs, but they are still a corrupted form of Elf. Without getting into a lot of detail, I was disappointed with the game in some ways. Skyrim seems to favor doing bad things, despite the character played being the Dragonborn, a person who brings good and who is in line to become Emperor. The game has achievements, and many of these involve doing evil things. This is unfortunate, and while a player is not at all required to do these things, some aspects of the game are closed-off if a player ignores these activities. The new expansion of the game, Dawnguard, seems to make up for this somewhat.

Most of the hype was directed towards the evil side of this expansion, involving vampires, but really, as far as I can see, the “good side” gains here. I also have to pat Bethesda (the game maker) on the back for making the vampires in fact gross and bad. Some may have a problem with the main vampire character being “good,” but at least they included dialogue for you to choose that shows your disdain for the whole idea, if you so choose to use that dialogue; there is also the possibility that this character will willingly give up her vampirism (become cured).

These games are made for the masses and they are not in business to lose money, so one has to take the good with the bad and make the most of it; in real life this is often murkier and harder to do than in games like Skyrim. That being said, the Dawnguard include in their ranks a witty, funny, smart, and spiritually active ex-priest. He adds a positive spiritual character that is a counter to the street preacher that so many players actually want to kill. Finally, I’ll leave you with basic good and bad points of Skyrim/Dawnguard/Hearthfire, and this quote from John Battle-Born of Whiterun.

This statement may very well be Bethesda’s commentary on the gaming world and not Skyrim, since there appears to be no connection to it and anything in the game–except perhaps that everyone that you encounter in the wild seems to want you to kill them!: “You know what’s wrong with Skyrim these days? Everyone’s obsessed with death.” Good points:

Truly beautiful to look at and wander around in: HUGE. Our world beautiful, not abstract, though there are awe-inspiring places that mix underwater concepts into air-breathing spaces.

Complicated main quests and min-quests that require you to listen to many characters to decide what’s best (if you do it right).

Religious and political aspects and some real-world history, along with the fantastic. Real world lessons in deciphering the truth, in seeing through people’s blind ideologies or loyalties.

No sex and little swearing.

Fun and rewarding; tons of play time and things to do including blacksmithing, mixing potions, exploring, etc., besides fighting bandits and doing the quests.

Absolute loads of books, notes, recipes, etc. (I believe there are over 1,000), promote reading and the value of the written word.

The new Hearthfire expansion allows the player to – finally – adopt children, as well as do some fun housebuilding.

There is much fighting, which might not appeal to some. Play yourself to decide (use the Dawnguard crossbow and you just might get hooked – forewarning you).

In Skyrim, the bad seems to be rewarded more than the good. The new Dawnguard and Hearthfire expansions seems to even this out some.

The longer you take to finish the Vampire quest, the more citizens die in the towns – regular citizens, not just stand-ins.

Glitches, apparently the more you play the more there are.

This isn’t BAD, but just saying – it could’ve used more humor (there is some subtle dry humor in the game).

The sparks spell and cast familiar spell, against a lively skeleton (well, it WAS lively). Author screen shot.

For more thoughts on Skyrim, particularly regarding its darker aspects and dealing with them with your children, see On Skyrim: A Vent from a Christian Parent (a mom who plays). November 5, 2012. I just found this out so I thought I’d pass it along, from the Bethesda Softworks site on October 26, 2012:

Earlier today, Skyrim came away as the big winner at the UK’s most prestigious gaming award show, The Golden Joysticks. The game captured the night’s biggest award, Ultimate Game of the Year, as well as awards for Best RPG and Best Moment (visiting the Throat of the World).

There are other articles about Destiny, but they are in regards to it's first year and where applicable, critical of certain aspects of the game and especially of how the second year made the first year's game useless. Those in charge of the game thumbed their noses at first year players (who are a type of investor). To play the game fully the second year, players had to fork out another $60; new players, arriving the second year, got the first year free, basically.

Pure

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Christian Things and Things Seen Through Christian Eyes

"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." C.S. Lewis
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"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27).
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Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6:1
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"David said to Gad, 'I am in deep distress. Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is very great; but do not let me fall into human hands'.” 1 Chronicles 21:13

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